1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a parking assist system and method for automatically varying a parking area, and more particularly, to technology performing parking assistance by varying a parking area according to an occupant's build.
2. Description of the Related Art
A smart parking assist system searches a parking space using an ultrasonic sensor and a smart wheel sensor, generates a parking path to a parking location, and controls steering. That is, the smart parking assist system allows a driver to automatically park a vehicle just by control of forward and rearward movements and a brake operation without a steering wheel operation.
In other words, the smart parking assist system may scan a zone in which there is a parking space using an ultrasonic wave to search a space and measure a width of the parking space through ultrasonic scanning and a width and length of the parking space through the smart wheel sensor when passing the zone in which there exists the parking space.
The smart parking assist system may check whether or not the searched parking space is available to park the vehicle based on the measured width and length of the parking space, determines an appropriate target parking location when the searched space is an available parking zone as a checking result, generates a parking path from a current location to the target parking location, and controls a steering angle to follow the generated parking path, thereby attempting to park the vehicle to the target parking location.
When performing parking assistance, when an occupant's own vehicle to be parked protrudes from surrounding vehicles, a parking appearance is spoiled and parking hazards during parking are increased. Accordingly, it is required that the vehicle be parked closer to a curb or a wall surface.
Thus, the conventional smart parking assist system calculates a parking area to maintain the fixed distance to a curb or a wall surface in the parking zone, regardless of the occupant and the occupant's build.
However, when parking the vehicle with maintaining the fixed distance to the curb or wall surface, the occupant of a bigger build feels inconvenience due to a narrow space at the time the occupant gets into and out of the vehicle, and since the distance to the curb or wall surface is fixedly maintained even when the occupant is not in the vehicle, there is also a problem of creating a waste of the parking space